Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Another two Canadian universities have agreed to stop using live animals in trauma-medicine training courses, marking the end of the practice completely in this country, according to the doctor-led animal-rights group that has lobbied for the controversial change.

Doctors and other trauma trainees at Quebec’s University of Sherbrooke and Sacré Coeur hospital in Montreal have begun practising on human-like, computerized simulators instead of pigs or dogs.
It means none of the 22 Canadian universities and hospitals that offer the Advanced Trauma Life Support program uses animals any longer, said Dr. John Pippin, a spokesman for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C. Last year, the use of animals in medical-school training also came to a close in Canada, he said.

“We’re confident that now Canada, bless them, is leading the way,” said Dr. Pippin.